The Watsonian (blog)

so, we are leav­ing Tapes­try.  As I said in the last post, we are doing this with a heavy but hope­ful heart and with a knowl­edge of where God is lead­ing us.

But I was pretty vague about where he is lead­ing us…

so today, our final day in Cartersville, I want to tell you a lit­tle about our next 10–15 years.

Katie and I have always had a heart to live close to a major city.  We have prayed and looked at Bal­ti­more, DC, Boston, Atlanta, but none of those were where God was lead­ing us.  How­ever, there was an oppor­tu­nity that came open about halfway through our  engage­ment and it felt just right.  I actu­ally knew it in the mid­dle of a ser­vice at another church that we were look­ing at pos­si­bly join­ing with as staff members.

So with a bunch of antic­i­pa­tion, and none of the hoopla,

the Wat­sons are mov­ing to Orlando to join with Gen­e­sis Church!

Katie and I will be work­ing with Scotty and Shel­lie Pat­ter­son on lead­ing Kid­Ge­n­e­sis, the kid spe­cific area of Gen­e­sis Church.

To say we are pumped would be a seri­ous understatement…

but we are not going with­out needs/prayer requests…

- our move this weekend

- a nanny/child-care posi­tion for Katie

- the lead­er­ship team as we put a set of struc­ture and sys­tems together from scratch

- sev­eral of our team mem­bers need houses to sale, jobs to come open and houses in Orlando to close.…KEEP PRAYING!

- Alaina as she makes the tran­si­tion from being close to her NiNi and Mia (Katie’s mom and my mom) and for them also as they make this tran­si­tion also

- our fam­ily that we con­tinue to fol­low God and that He con­tin­ues to stretch our faith and under­stand­ing of what He is up to in this world.

This last Sun­day, Novem­ber 29th,  I served my last time as Direc­tor of Fam­ily Min­istries for Tapes­try Church.  It was a sad day for our fam­ily, but it was one that was also full of hope.  To put all rumors to rest, there was no prob­lem between the lead­er­ship team and I on the vision, direc­tion or man­age­ment of Tapes­try.  I firmly believe in what Richard, James, Roye and the rest of the steer­ing team are doing with Tapes­try.  And hon­estly, with things feel­ing like they are gain­ing momen­tum, it was very hard to make this decision.

But when you feel God call­ing and lead­ing you in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, it’s hard to ignore.  And Katie and I have known since July, and been in con­ver­sa­tion with the lead­er­ship team at Tapes­try since then also, about our depar­ture from Tapes­try and going on the new  adven­ture that God has laid out before us.

Atten­ders, vol­un­teers and staff of Tapes­try Church,

Thank you! Thank you for the oppor­tu­nity to join with you over the last year and half in our mutual pur­suit of a Risen Sav­ior who cares deeply for us and the peo­ple of Bar­tow County.  Thank you for you kind­ness and genoros­ity not only to the church but to the peo­ple in this com­mu­nity.  Thank you for so many times tak­ing your­self, break­ing your­self open and pour­ing your­self out for our world.  Thank you for your encour­age­ment and coun­sel­ing as I got mar­ried this year.  Thank you for just being you, peo­ple who are still rec­og­niz­ing their unique iden­tity and mis­sion as image bear­ers of the Risen Jesus.  Katie and I love you with all our hearts and know that wher­ever God takes us, Tapes­try Church will be a part of our prayers and thoughts.

Grace & Peace,

Joshua, Katie and Alaina

As for where God is lead­ing us, I will save that for a later post, but prayers will be greatly appreciated.

Happy Thanks­giv­ing to all my friends, fam­ily, ene­mies and peo­ple that I ran­domly meet or visit this blog.

I am thank­ful for every­one one of you as you con­tin­u­ally build through both trial and encour­age­ment a thank­ful­ness for what God has done in me, is doing through me and the grace and peace I recieve only through Him.  And this Thanks­giv­ing, I am extremely thank­ful for my wife, Katie; my daugh­ter, Alaina; my par­ents; my in-laws; my haverim; the AM guys and of course, all my friends at Tapes­try Church and Gen­e­sis Church.

Thanks for being here for us through this whole tran­si­tion! Love you all!

this is our fam­ily phi­los­o­phy: Love wins.  period.

and this is hard to do

Jesus called us to ‘love our ene­mies’ and to really have to under­stand what that means in a con­crete sit­u­a­tion, it’s hard

I hon­estly don’t want to love my enemies

I don’t want to carry the pack an extra mile

I don’t want to turn the other cheek

but I know I must

Not because Jesus said to

But because it’s the bet­ter way, it’s the way of jus­tice, it’s the way of love, it’s the way of Jesus

and that’s what this whole thing we call Chris­tian­ity is

fol­low­ing in the way of Jesus

fol­low­ing in the life of Jesus

real­iz­ing that we all don’t have it together, and that through some super­nat­ural way God brings us shalom.  peace.  wholeness.

and that’s what it means to fol­low Jesus.

Some really cool God things are hap­pen­ing in the life of the Watson’s right now

I really can’t wait to share them with you and let you know how you can pray/support us

But for right now, just wanted to give you a lit­tle update…

Tapes­try has been incred­i­ble in our new facil­ity.  There really is some momen­tum and moments of say­ing, ‘Wow, that has to be a ‘God-thing’ because we could never man­u­fac­ture that!’

I have been so priv­i­leged to be a part of what Richard and the team has done for the past year and a half and can’t wait to see what the next 2 years look like for them.

and as always, you can fol­low what is going here and here.

Mar­ried life has been great.  While it seemed that we stepped off the plane after our hon­ey­moon and all heck had bro­ken loose, we are more excited and hum­bled by what God is doing in us and through us.  And keep check­ing here to see if Mrs. Wat­son decides to start using her blog  And you can keep up with our daily adven­tures through Twit­ter here and here.

But keep on the look­out over the next few weeks for a big announce­ment about when, where and what is the Watson’s next adventure.

“Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood went to her grandmother’s house and went inside.  She then went to the bed, where the wolf (who had just eaten her grand­mother) was dis­guised as her grandmother.

‘what big eyes you have,’ said LRRH.  ‘The bet­ter to see you with, my dear,’ replied the Wolf.

‘what big ears you have.’  ‘The bet­ter to hear you with, my dear,’ the Wolf stated.

‘what big teeth you have,’ LRRH said to the Wolf.  ‘All the bet­ter to eat you with my dear’

That’s it.  What if I told this story to my lit­tle girl?  What would this tell her?  How would she view peo­ple?  The world?

But that’s kind of what we do with God’s story.  We start in Gen­e­sis 3, where sin entered the pic­ture.  Where the arro­gance of human­ity, brought sin into the world, and caused our inti­mate con­nec­tion with our Cre­ator to be ruined.  But if peo­ple don’t know about how God spoke the world into exis­tence in the poem in Gen­e­sis 1, or how He called us ‘good’ and cre­ation ‘good’ then they are going to view this life as tem­po­rary hold­ing place till we go off  ‘into the wild blue yonder.’

To quote Rob Bell, ‘where we begin deter­mines the story we are telling.’

Begin­ning in Gen­e­sis 1 and going to Rev­e­la­tion 22, lets us know that what we do, how we live, really does mat­ter.  It’s not about going to Heaven as much as its about heaven com­ing here.  It’s not about evac­u­a­tion the­ol­ogy (i.e., ‘I’ll Fly Away’) but more about God’s plan of trans­for­ma­tion for Cre­ation (includ­ing, well, everything.)

So instead of it being about what we are pri­mar­ily not and against.  The story, the Gospel story, is about what God has called us from the begin­ning, GOOD, and how are lives, no mat­ter how messed up, can/will be trans­formed as we join in the renewal of all things.

So the story we believe and live in affects how we treat oth­ers, view God and view ourselves.

What story do you live in?

Vic­tory attained by vio­lence is tan­ta­mount to defeat, for it is momentary

- Mahatma Ghandi

For the next few months, my life will be in a con­stant state of transition.

So if I don’t write on here as much, please for­give me.

Some impor­tant dates…

Sept 26-27th– Mov­ing facil­i­ties for Tapestry

Oct 4th– first ser­vice at new facil­ity for Tapes­try (10am at Gold’s Gym in Cartersville)

Oct 17th– I’m get­ting hitched (you can fol­low the whole process here)

Oct 18-24th– HONEYMOON!  One night in Hot­lanta and then the rest in beau­ti­ful Can­cun! (so expect zero blogging/twittering)

Also, be on the look­out for some more impor­tant annoucements/ updates over the next cou­ple of months!

I had some incred­i­ble feed­back to my last post.

I didn’t write it to change the world.  I wrote it as a confession.

So now I want to offer some­thing, do you have a pic­ture?  do you have a story? want to share it?

I have started a new blog: whatsyourpic­ture

so let me know, shoot me an e-mail with your pic & story or post it in the com­ments.  I am excited for peo­ple to share these and show a big­ger pic­ture of redemp­tion and restoration.

For those that don’t know me or stum­ble on The Wat­son­ian, my name is Joshua.

Wel­come to my life and a lit­tle sneak peek into the story God has writ­ten so far…

If you look at the pic­ture that I posted yes­ter­day, you will see some­thing that looks like the ‘per­fect’ pic­ture, but I can tell you…its far from that.

I see a man who has strug­gled with his iden­tity in Christ and what that really means.

I see a man who strug­gled with pornog­ra­phy for many years and has only ever admit­ted that to a few people.

I see a man who allowed oth­ers to lead because he strug­gled with thoughts of being ‘good enough’ and ‘man enough’

I see a man who strug­gled with weight issues ear­lier in life and has let that shape the way he views himself

I see a man who ‚though raised in a Chris­t­ian home and who expe­ri­enced God through prayer and worship, doubted the exis­tence of God for almost a year.

I see a man who has guarded who he really is and his past so much, that this post is one of the hard­est things he has done.

and because of this fear, he has judged oth­ers pre­ma­turely and doesn’t let g0 of past mis­takes (his and others)

and I see a man who has cho­sen to fol­low Jesus and knows that God has invited him into His story of redemp­tion and restora­tion.  And in join­ing this story, has found accep­tance, peace and a new found love for others.

and this man has been given an amaz­ing gift, a beau­ti­ful woman, whos also not perfect, who wants to be his wife and with her, a won­der­ful daugther that he has a chance to show a father’s love and what that really means.

And that’s a story.

A story of redemp­tion.  res­cue.  restora­tion.  hope.